It was Couples Week on Mad Men, an intimate array of men, women and the deep, dark, dog-food-advertising secrets that come between them. And if those weren't intense enough for you, there were family histories of psychiatry and assumed identities to help gird the tension as well. So why did it all seem so... bloodless?
Of course, episode 311 of Mad Men really was sort of a milestone for the series, finally featuring the showdown in which the snoopy, restless Betty breaks out of her rut to confront Don about the Shoebox of Truth she found last week in his desk. We weren't sure we were going to get it at first -- not with Betty packing for a week back at her late father's house and another doleful sibling quarrel about how and when to unload the property. Betty's brother William is as determined as ever to get the inheritance that's coming to him, but the estate lawyer who drops by for a consultation doesn't tell him what he wants to hear. He doesn't tell Betty what she wants to hear, either; asked about her options in the Don scenario -- in which he's hidden the details of a past divorce and identity-thievery -- the lawyer advises her to suck it up and stick with the guy who provides for her and her three kids. Betty drags on her cigarette, reels, exhales. It's going to be that kind of day.
Roger won't have it much better back at Sterling Cooper, where dog-food heiress, ex-flame and recent widow Annabelle Mathis pays a visit to help revive her brand's flagging market share. Annabelle only has a few conditions: Retaining the name Caldecott Farms, and keeping the horse-meat formula that has made Caldecott Farms a rich, ponylicious canine treat for generations (even if it revolts dog owners). Don will get right to work on that, he says, and Annabelle will get right to work on Roger, for whom she's carried quite the torch since their torrid pre-war fling in Paris. She knows he's remarried to the younger, sultrier Jane, but as she soon learns, that shouldn't be misapprehended as a lack of scruples on Roger's part. "This girl's different," he tells the lusty lush Annabelle after an expository "business" dinner, and for the first time since their courtship began, it's hard not to believe him.
His sympathetic restoration continues with a call from Joan, another ex who wants something: Help finding a new job. Turns out her career in department-store administration ended almost as soon as it began, and if Roger can put the word out that a no-nonsense secretarial manager is on the market, she'd be much obliged. And the sooner he can do it the better, because Joan's self-pitying hubby Greg isn't faring so well on his transition from surgery to psychiatry. He won't listen to her advice to be candid about his own father's troubled emotional history, and when his job interview fails, he takes his inertia out on his poor wife. Joan naturally reacts as any beleaguered spouse would: By smashing a vase over his head and retiring to the bedroom. He'll recompense later by joining the Army -- as a surgeon, natch, "maybe [in] Vietnam, if that's still going on" -- without first consulting Joan.
I'm only going through all this to develop what's supposed to provide perspective for the real power struggle of the episode -- the one to which Mad Men has seemingly built for two-and-a-half years only to have this one shot at a payoff. Yet in the end, the best thing about Don vs. Betty is how utterly unprepared he is for all of it. For starters, he had planned a Connecticut getaway with Miss Farrell, who has spent the last three weeks dropping hints like bombs that she's in it to win it. "I wanted more than I thought I would want, but it will pass," she tells Don. "I know for a fact it will." He encourages her ("I don't want it to pass") and even has the sack to drive up to his house with her to pack some stuff for their journey.
Too bad Betty didn't stay at her father's place as promised. ""Get it later," she tells Don when he attempts to retrieve his hat and, of course, expel Miss Farrell from his car. "I need to talk to you." I couldn't believe it, but not necessarily for the right reasons. I mean, this is it? With two episodes left in the season? They're going to do this now? Next thing you know they're at the corner of Don's desk, and the only preoccupation you can have after all this time is that Don's mistress is sitting outside with her suitcase. The whole Draper relationship dynamic is about to rock off its axis, and all I care about is how Miss Farrell is going to get home. Betty's demanding him to unlock his drawer, where his past as Dick Whitman and the groundwork for the future of his family will take shape. Jon Hamm wears a marvelous mask of shock. January Jones finally gets to do something more than mope through Betty's ennui. All of this, and it's like, well, come on. Why don't I care?
Perhaps because I've been through his back story, and I want to rescue poor Miss Farrell more than I want to observe poor, credulous Betty playing catch-up. Betty has finally wrested control, though, for what it's worth -- the umpteenth Don Draper associate/confidante in three seasons to seemingly have the goods on the dude, and the one least least likely to exercise that leverage in the future. "What would you do if you were me?" she asks him, squandering her first burst of power. "Would you love you?" It's not rhetorical. And so the balance of pity shifts, even in the moment, back to Don. He sobs through the memories of his late brother, his poor upbringing, and his post-Korea strategizing to keep the Draper name. And like that, everything's back to... normal?
Pretty much. The only thing I could figure is that maybe it's all a big MacGuffin to distract from the volatile dirt Miss Farrell has on him; indeed, that confrontation's a ways off. Don calls her from the office the morning after she finally gave up and walked home. They've got to cool it for a while. "Are you OK?" she asks him. "Only you would ask about me right now," he replies. She's either as sincere as she sounds or is getting ready to nuke him back to the Bachelor Age. But first! Halloween! What started ambitiously for Sally and Bobby as Minnie Mouse and and an astronaut has degraded into a gypsy and a hobo. How fitting. "And who are you supposed to be?" a candygiver jokingly asks Don. Please. If I wanted my TV this on-the-nose I'd watch Crash.